Abandoned by this God. Perhaps, not by the next.
Ten…
The ship squatted like a large inert crab in the launch area. Inside were stowed the seed corn, one thousand carefully selected men and women. Someday to be sown in the uncertain fields of space. Each pilgrim left to his or her own thoughts as the countdown read off second by second in their headsets.
Nine…
Never to return. Soon there would be no more Earth.
Eight…
The countdown meant a last of things.
Seven…
A brilliant scientist had been born fifty years ago. Many people wished he’d not been so brilliant, or perhaps not been born in the first place. The ship which contained the pilgrims was his design. Nobody doubted that only his genius could’ve created such a ship in such as short a period of time. His genius is what made it necessary.
Unexpectedly, he discovered the Earth’s sun would go dark in a matter of a few years, rather than die as a red giant after billions of years as previously predicted by other scientists. The laws of physics proven wrong were of little importance now that the end was near—seconds close. So little time. To save even a few would take the efforts of everyone, and yet, this might not be enough.
So little time.
But they hoped it was enough.
Six…
In order to provide the necessary energy, Earth herself would give up the last of her lifeblood, providing the largest degree of probability that the ship would reach the nearest habitable planet. Every bit of energy contained within all Earth’s matter would be necessary, channeled and carefully fed into the ship’s engines at the moment of lift-off.
E = mc2
A lot of m for a lot of E. Especially when multiplied by the speed of light squared.
Five…
They’d need lots of E, which would require every bit of the m.
Scattered throughout the planet, deep borings were drilled through the crust and well into the mantle. Connected by tendrils of an extensive collection system, which all led to this place, and, ultimately, into the engines within the ship.
Yes, it was amazing that such a technological feat could not have somehow been used to save the world itself, but the calculations proved this was not possible. His calculations, in the end. And there was not enough time to someday prove these calculations wrong. Even this one ship with one thousand souls had been such a close thing.
Four…
It was remarkable that there had been little panic from those left behind to insure the survival of so few. Billions of faces watched the televisions and knew their lives were over in a matter of seconds; yet they watched with a noble resignation. The brilliant scientist was one of them. He’d refused a place on the ship, despite the pleadings that his genius was too valuable to lose.
Three…
The propulsion unit engaged. The voyagers inside the ship felt a faint jolt, like one faraway freight car being linked to another. At that moment, matter throughout their world began the conversion to energy and was drawn forth to feed the hunger of the newly awoken engine. It was a living beast and ravenous.
Two…
The snow and glaciers on the mountains didn’t have time to hiss, and vanished. Mountains split into boulders, which split into rocks, which split into grains of sand, and finally into individual atoms and the pieces of atoms. Forces that had held these together for countless eons now flowed into the ship, fed it a hardy, waking meal. These forces became white-blue flame, not of combustion, but something imaginably more powerful, licking at the base of the shimmering launch-pad, remarkably subdued for the power which it represented.
One…
The faces inside the ship felt a tug as the ground began to subside beneath them like the drop from the top on a huge roller coaster.
Zero…
The ship shot upward. Faces disintegrated into nothingness.
In fact, there was no longer an orbit to leave as the vessel streaked towards its destiny.
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